Tuesday 13 May 2008

Do people honestly not understand what's wrong?

I can’t tell how genuine are the enquiries what it is that’s bad about being given antischizophrenic drugs, in my own experience which is all I can speak of (plus Dawn’s I suppose to a degree). Sometimes the enquiries strike me as near to being cynical ways of getting round my objections, or perhaps objections put forward either on my behalf or on the behalf generally of patients subjected to such drugging, with the intention (this fear is in my mind this morning since the failure of any help from the Drinking Water Inspectorate, meaning I cannot know the circumstances of drugging our water supply and cannot be at all sanguine it will not resume) of continuing by hook or by crook to foist these drugs on me.

The thing is, what I have lately been complaining about I should have complained about before, but was stilled by the drugs given at the time. What I have suffered as a result of perpetrations I am now complaining about range over various types of negative experience including physical hurt, loss or waste of my money and waste of my time and effort. In Bristol police cells in September 2004 I was physically hurt, and while I did complain towards the beginning of 2005 I did not sufficiently pursue the complaint, and (naturally enough) nobody else looked out adequately for me (especially since it was an ‘official body’ sanctioning what it was I was complaining about - over-use of force by a security firm employed by some ‘health authority’ - and that official body or a related official body was the body which would have provided any support to look out for me: just like patients’ advocates for hospitalised mental patients, and even the solicitors patients are provided with, being part of the Mental Health system running the entire show).

I lose money (as one example) from the interference with the postal service, which means I cannot presume as the average citizen can that almost all his letters posted in the ordinary way will be delivered reasonably promptly. I need to pay to record the delivery, at least, so as to be sure the letter has in fact been delivered, and when.

Waste of my time and effort includes inefficient procedures I adopt when my mind is fuddled by drugs, sometimes (especially in the past) leading me to experience severe frustration because nothing I try delivers the required result in anything like the ordinarily acceptable way. And (baffling in the extreme to us non-psychiatrists) these frustrations have been deliberately engineered, presumably (this is all I can guess) to observe the ways I try to get round obstacles. A simple (but frequent) example of this is to be found in my attempts (and Dawn’s since she has joined with me) to use public payphones. It cannot be an ordinary average statistic that everyone who phones BT has to wait half an hour or more for an answer. Such frustrations get exaggerated through (1) fear that the consequences may include further suffering along the lines of detention and drugging; and (2) not having anything else in mind at the same time as an interesting and happy-making diversion (ie if the antischizophrenic drugs cause me at the time to have an almost completely empty mind).

All I can hope is that publicising the ridiculous way I have been treated will make it known and understood by a wide audience, and hope this will deter much in future of the same.

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